The present invention relates to a flat-panel display device, and more particularly to a driver for the flat-panel display device.
Cathode ray tubes are thick and heavy for the large-screen televisions now being actively researched. This requires the development of a flat-panel display devices which, are better suited to the cathode ray tubes.
Among flat-panel display devices, plasma display devices have good display quality but consume a great amount of power. To overcome this disadvantage, conventionally, a current-limiting resistor is replaced with a constant current source which reduces the power consumed when using the current-limiting resistor. But, the reduced amount of power is not significant for a laptop computer which employs the flat-panel display device and is driven by a battery. Further, when many pixels are turned on, the total current flowing through the pixels increases which reduces voltage by increasing the voltage drop across a resistor, so that the potential difference between anode and cathode electrodes of each pixel decreases. When this happens, the current as well as the luminance of the pixels also decreases.
Thus, according to a conventional driver regardless of whether power is consumed by a luminance-limiting resistor, the pixel luminance reduces to suppress the rise in temperature of the pixels. However, this driver is ineffective in reducing the overall power consumption.